Want to know the 3 greatest challenges facing entrepreneurs?

By Ann Andrews CSP

About a month ago I conducted a survey of around 1000 entrepreneurs for a training company. They wanted to find out exactly what the entrepreneur's greatest fears were around building/growing their business? I didn’t differentiate between pure start ups and existing businesses.

The 21 categories I suggested in the survey were:

• Strategic planning Succession planning • Sales and marketing Competition • Skills gap Lack of business insight • Time management Delegating • Financial planning Asking for help • Compliance Managing stress • Personal growth Self doubt • Flexibility Talent management • Finding the right team Change management • Decision making Work life balance • Training and development

I was fully expecting ‘work life balance’ to hit the top of the list; or possibly financial planning or even perhaps, managing stress. But you can see from the results below my top 3 weren’t even in the top 5:

  1. Time management
  2. Sales and marketing
  3. Self belief
  4. Self doubt
  5. Strategic planning
  6. Asking for help
  7. Change management
  8. Decision making
  9. Delegating
  10. Work life balance
  11. Financial planning
  12. Succession planning
  13. Competition
  14. Personal growth
  15. Lack of business insight
  16. Compliance
  17. Managing stress
  18. Flexibility
  19. Skills gap
  20. Training and development
  21. Talent management

I guess my big surprise was how high in the rankings ‘self belief’ came. I guess we think that entrepreneurs are imbued with massive doses of self confidence – not so it seems. And of course, for me, an HR consultant, I guess the fact that skills, training and talent management were at the bottom of the list was worrying, because no business can be built with one person, we all need a good team around us, and having found great people we surely need to look after them. However, an interesting exercise.

As a result of the very simple survey, the training company AudioNovo are now able to work on building a range of mini training products for entrepreneurs which will address their fears and help them seriously grow their businesses.

I guess the big message that came out of the exercise for all of us was – never assume you know what people are going through. When in doubt – ask.